This specification relates to data transfer formats.
Computers interconnected over a network can communicate using a variety of protocols. A given protocol can support any number of data encoding formats. Hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP), for example, can be used to transfer information from one computer to another. To successfully transfer information from a transmitting computer to a receiving computer, an encoding format is established so that data encoded by the sender can be decoded by the recipient.
To transmit multiple data elements over a network for receipt at a computer, the recipient computer and the transmitting computer use the same data encoding format so that transmitted data can be successfully parsed and interpreted by the recipient. Any number of formats can be established, but in order to limit the bandwidth required to transfer a given amount of data, it is desirable to limit the amount of overhead introduced by the chosen format. To transfer multiple-element character data (multiple variables represented by ASCII text, for example) transfer formats generally utilize one or more delimiter characters to separate respective variable elements. A parsing program at the recipient computer can then, based on the chosen data encoding format, extract the data and assign it to the correct variables.
Ideally, a given encoding format is flexible so that changes, e.g., the inclusion of one or more new variables can be handled by the encoding architecture without requiring substantial (or any) changes to the underlying code. Careful selection of the one or more delimiters and the basic format for a given encoding scheme can therefore enhance the efficiency and usefulness of the data encoding format.